Celequest Announces Retail Solution Template for Delivering Complete Visibility of Retail Operations to Business and Supply Chain Managers

Solution to Provide Real-Time Sales and Inventory Data, Key Metrics and Personalized Dashboards through Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

CHICAGO, RETAIL SYSTEMS SHOW, May 17, 2004 -- Celequest, the leading provider of software for business activity monitoring (BAM), today announced the general availability of Celequest's Retail Solution Template, the industry's first vertical solution designed to provide retailers with instantaneous and complete visibility into sales, inventory and operational activities. Celequest's solution templates enables retailers to more accurately forecast sales, manage and fulfill inventory needs across the supply chain, and provide complete demand visibility into product requirements through a real-time, operational dashboard.

Retailers traditionally utilize a variety of disparate and cumbersome data management systems to compute and log transactions, track sales, monitor promotions and inventory, and conduct analysis into operational activities. These data repositories only provide knowledge from the past but do not provide visibility into the present or insight into the future. Without the ability to view critical business information in real-time, retailers are limited in their ability to make fast, educated decisions in order to meet the needs of their manufacturers, their customers and ultimately their business.

"Whether it be for the holiday season; timely promotions; sales and clearance close-outs; or for everyday operations; real-time information and complete visibility across the supply chain enables retailers to be more agile and strategic in the decisions they make on a daily and sometimes hourly basis," said Diaz Nesamoney, founder, President and CEO of Celequest. "With Celequest's Business Activity Monitoring Suite customized for the retail market, retailers can improve the speed, accuracy, and visibility of their operations to respond immediately and effectively to fluctuations and trends in their business -- increasing business efficiencies and profitability."

Celequest's Business Activity Monitoring Suite provides an operational dashboard that gives business managers and executives a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the metrics and events that are shaping their business. The Celequest dashboard extends the value of real-time business intelligence by providing a simple and effective display of information and analytics, allowing business managers to improve their responsiveness based on the information and make urgent decisions that could have a significant impact on meeting their business objectives.

Sample Retail Scenario's include

1. Sales Visibility -- Metrics for hourly/daily product sales by channel (store, online, call center) relative to forecast or historic trends. Track merchandising performance and metrics by volume, revenue and gross margin.

2. Demand Visibility -- Metrics and rules to identify performance of merchandising tactics (promotions, price changes, new product introductions, etc.) based on sales, new customers and customer traffic by store/e-channels or region.

3. Inventory Visibility -- Metrics and rules to identify inventory in the supply chain and current demand to ensure product availability and customer satisfaction.

Celequest's BAM architecture streams transaction data directly to the desktop of the business and retail operations managers, while enabling personalized business rules to be defined for automated alerting and information routing. By setting alerts and notifications pertaining to a specific set of data or information, inter-departmental groups within IT, supply chain, retail operations, merchandising and logistics can collaborate more productively in real-time to take immediate action based on the analysis of the data they have requested.

Celequest's Retail Solution Template incorporates the core technology of Celequest's BAM platform, including:

-- Retail Operations Dashboard: Business users can instantly view changes in Key Performance Indicatiors (KPIs) or other key metrics in real time on a user-configurable management dashboard. Celequest's dashboard associates time with business events, enabling business users to view trends over time while distinguishing between momentary spikes. The dashboard allows end-users to set thresholds and view alerts on high-risk events.

-- Flexible Rules Environment: Business rules can be changed "on the fly" by business users and analysts to quickly respond to operational business events or changes in government regulations.

-- Data Correlation: Celequest's patent-pending "streaming data engine" monitors business events in real-time and integrates those events with contextual data from data warehouses or operational systems, pushing key metrics and alerts to business users as events happen.

About Celequest

Celequest has developed a powerful new architectural approach for Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) that dramatically improves enterprise agility, productivity, and responsiveness for the real-time enterprise. Critical application areas for the company's technology include demand visibility, inventory monitoring, real-time sales analysis, margin optimization and logistics monitoring, enabling faster response to a wide spectrum of critical business events. Celequest was recently awarded the prestigious eWEEK Excellence Award in the category of Business Management: Analytics & Reporting, was named one of Intelligent Enterprise's 2004 "Companies to Watch" and is a finalist for the Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) 19th Annual Codie Award. Celequest is a privately held company funded by Bay Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners and based in Redwood Shores, California. For more information about Celequest, please visit http://www.celequest.com.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

     Contacts:
     Peter Galvin             Julie Keslik       Colin Crook
     Celequest                Sparkpr            Sparkpr
     650-650-598-0300 x4083   415-321-1877       415-321-1887
     pgalvin@celequest.com    julie@sparkpr.com  colin@sparkpr.com



SOURCE Celequest
Web Site: http://www.celequest.com